AMS Area of Concentration in CM

Computational Medicine is a discipline in which mechanistic models of disease are developed, personalized using patient data, and applied to improve disease diagnosis and treatment. The Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics (AMS) offers a PhD Area of Concentration (AOC) in Computational Medicine.

The three tracks in this AOC are:

Computational Anatomy is the mathematical and computational discipline of how to describe anatomic shape and function, as measured using medical imaging techniques and their variations in health and disease. It is a discipline which is poised to have a profound impact on many different areas of medicine by enabling discovery of anatomic biomarkers that are highly predictive of disease.

Computational Molecular Medicine addresses the problems of how to identify the structure of molecular networks, how to model their dynamics, how network properties are altered in disease, and how this knowledge may be applied to improve disease diagnosis and treatment.

Computational Physiological Medicine develops integrative models of disease that span multiple levels of biological organization. Models are used to understand disease mechanisms and test in silico approaches for treating disease. The ultimate goal is to personalize these models using patient data and then apply them to deliver improved healthcare.

The AMS AOC in Computational Medicine is directed by Dr. Donald Geman. Dr. Geman is Professor of Applied Mathematics and Statistics and is a Core Faculty member of the Institute for Computational Medicine.

PhD students concentrating in Computational Medicine must matriculate through a degree-granting program at Johns Hopkins University. They must elect to pursue research with an ICM Core Faculty member having training privileges within that degree-granting program.

Students will need to meet all requirements of their “home” degree-granting program. Students will elect to pursue one of the three tracks described above, selecting an ICM Core Faculty member within that track as the research mentor (in addition to an advisor from the home program). Students will be expected to select a minimum of seven courses from the curriculum described below, thus meeting the Maryland Higher Education Commission (MHEC) requirement that an area of concentration provide at least 18 credit hours of focused class instruction at the PhD level, and pursue research with an ICM Core Faculty member leading to the PhD degree.